Emma gasped and stumbled backward. The big cats around her growled, but she felt their fear. The hag was nowhere to be seen.
The man’s head was bald, his face hairless and lined. When he opened his mouth and spoke, it was a harsh, snarling language Emma had never heard before. The sound echoed strangely among the trees, changing, then turning into words she understood.
“What sort of cat wears a human skin and travels with shadows?” the echoes said.
“I’m Emma,” she said, and her voice, too, echoed among the trees. “I’m a girl and a Pride-Heart. We just want to pass.”
“This is our hunting ground,” the man said, and as he moved his mouth, the wolf’s mouth moved as well. “Cats are not welcome here.”
A few of her cats spat at this, but Emma held up a hand to calm them. She made sure her claws were retracted. “Then let us through. You won’t see us again. I’m only here at all because the faeries stole my sister. They stole someone from you, too, I think. I saw a wolf in their zoo, in a glass cage.”
The man and the wolf-head stared at her; the man nodded. “It is so. But she roamed far outside our lands. No faerie would trespass among our trees to steal from us.”
“I’m not here to steal, either,” Emma said.
He sniffed the air and leaned forward. “You’re lucky. Today is High Spring, Ostara, the end of a long sleep. A day of hunger and of hunting. To kill a human Pride-Heart would attract attention from beasts more dangerous than us. The forest has woken, as it does on this day every year, and you would be wise to stick to the path.” The wolf-skin’s lips pulled back in a snarl. “My pack will not trouble you, but other creatures may decide differently. Do not hunt in the moonlight. Do not kill among the trees. You have been warned.”
He pulled the wolf-skin back over his head, and then only a large, red-eyed wolf remained where the man had been. It dropped back on all fours, watching her a moment longer, then turned away and disappeared into the trees, the rest of the pack following.
Emma stood still for what seemed like a long time, trembling. Even her cats, for all their strength, had gathered close. They began to shrink to their normal sizes once more.
“What did he mean about the Deep Forest being awake tonight?” Emma asked.
The air seemed to swallow her words, and the trees rustled and creaked even though there was no wind.
“Tonight the Deep Forest is alive, hungry,” whispered Fat Leon. “Hungrier than usual for High Spring, I think. Can’t you feel it in the air?”
“If the faeries are using the forest’s High Spring magic to change your sister, we can’t have much time left,” Jack said.
A shadow emerged, became solid. The hag was still there. “Faeries not far,” she sang. “Listen.”
Emma concentrated. Perhaps she could hear something in the distance. Wind chimes. Bells. Faerie voices. There was a brightness up ahead, an even stronger blue moonlight. They walked toward the light only to find the way blocked by trees. Low-hanging branches intertwined as if they had always been that way, though the path had seemed clear before. The spaces between the tree trunks were choked with hanging vines and thick, thorn-covered rose bushes.
“Faeries only wants invited humans,” the hag said.
“We can squeeze through,” Jack said. “Just try harder.”
Emma pushed at the vines and tried to crawl through the bushes. Her pride followed. But it was no use. The thorns scratched her. Brambles stuck to her clothes and tangled in her hair. And everything seemed to be positioned in just the right way to snag at her feet or scratch her face. She could hear her cats yowling in pain.
Above her the rustling of the trees seemed to become a whisper. You’re not welcome here. You shouldn’t be here. You want to go back. You want to run away. Was this the faeries’ way of keeping her out? A part of her would have been glad to do exactly what the whispers said. When she turned to look back, the trees were spaced far apart, giving her plenty of room to walk through them.
“I’m not leaving without my sister,” she hissed, cutting at the vines and brambles with her claws.
She could leave, the trees whispered, but she wants to stay. They all want to stay.
“She’ll come with me. I know she will!” Emma said. This wasn’t going to be like Nissa’s eye-puppet Jen. This was Helena. Once Helena realized what was happening, what the faeries were going to do to her, she’d want to go home. Pieces of vine and branch and rosebush fell away from her claws.
We will not let you take her. Only those that want to leave can pass.
“Fine,” Emma spat, and then, with a last effort, she managed to climb through the tangle, stumbling onto clear forest floor. The hag was already waiting for her, shadowy and insubstantial. The pride hissed and spat as they finished clawing their way through to stand beside her.
“Easy,” Jack said, licking at a scratch on his side.
“Yeah, right,” Emma said. “Easy.”
“Shut up,” Cricket hissed. “There’s someone coming.”
Emma ducked down behind a tree and sniffed the air. There was a sharp chemical scent that wasn’t at all like the forest. Definitely something human. Shampoo or deodorant.
“I heard voices,” came a boy’s voice. “Should we go back and tell them someone’s out here?”
A girl answered. “Doesn’t matter what you hear. Corbin thinks someone’s trying to sneak in, and he wants to see who. That means we have to see it or we’ll be no good to the lords and ladies. Without our eyes they won’t know what’s going on.”
“Well, hurry up, I don’t want to miss the ceremony! Who knows when they’ll let us up on the twenty-seventh floor again?”
“I’m going as fast as I can. You think it’s easy walking on soft ground wearing heels?”
They were crashing through the forest, loud and obvious and definitely human.
Emma found Fat Leon crouching nearby and put a finger to her mouth for silence. He tilted his head at her slightly, as if to say, You’re telling us? Emma waited until she was sure the boy and girl had passed, then she inched carefully around the tree.
She could see now that the trees ended abruptly ahead of them and that beyond them was a clearing, bright with that unnatural moonlight. Tall LED lamps slowly changed from yellow and red to white to green, casting the nearby leaves first in autumn colors, then winter, then spring and summer. A faerie in designer sunglasses sat at a foldout table at the edge of the clearing, fiddling with a laptop computer. Soft, mystical music — bells and wind chimes and flutes — flowed from huge speakers positioned around the clearing. A portable generator hummed nearby, cables spewing out of it and snaking through the grass, powering the lights and speakers.
At the far end of the clearing a spotlit wooden stage had been erected next to an impossibly tall tree that reached up into the sky until it seemed as though it would touch the stars themselves. In front of the stage were the faeries Emma had seen in the nightclub — the honeysuckle and spiderweb faeries — and more, although she didn’t see Nissa. They were surrounded by a crowd of young people in elaborate outfits, watching both the stage and the faeries, and chattering excitedly.
An enormous screen was suspended from one of the tree’s branches, showing a live shot of an empty stage. Only the stage wasn’t empty. A shiver ran up Emma’s spine as she saw the faerie standing center stage. It was the toadlike one who’d been with Helena at the nightclub. Corbin. His glamour was tall and broad-shouldered, his skin a warm olive brown, and his hair a wavy, sun-bleached chestnut shade. His brown eyes were bright and deep. The kind of eyes Helena’s magazines would have called “intense.”
He was holding a microphone, and a deep, smooth voice poured out of the speakers over the music.
“Welcome, friends and guests and worshippers! I hope you’ve all enjoyed yourselves so far, but now the real celebration begins. Tonight is a special night, my friends. Ostara. The Deep Forest is awake, and there is power in the earth and in the trees.”
<
br /> A hush fell over the audience as the faerie talked. It was as if he was lulling them, hypnotizing them almost. Even Emma had to shake her head to keep from nodding along excitedly. “Is Helena here?” she whispered to the hag.
The hag sniffed the air. “Close, now, and coming closer. I smell her. Afraid and excited both. Runaways smells like that, too, when they’re still fresh. Best to finds them quick before there’s only fear left to taste.”
Corbin was still talking. “It’s been a year since our last cele-bration, but there is only one night when we can borrow the Deep Forest’s magic and perform our miracle. The transformation of humans into faeries. Only tonight. And only four chosen.”
The captive audience breathed an exultant sigh, and then began to clap and cheer. A few of them were wiping away tears.
Then there came a loud ding! Emma glanced to her right and saw an elevator rising up out of the ground, the same one she had taken to the roof of the faerie nightclub. The doors slid open.
“And here they are now! Welcome to the Twenty-Seventh Floor!” Corbin called out.
Everyone turned to look as the four teens filed out of the elevator, led by Nissa and her eye-puppet Jen. At the front of the line was Helena, wearing the same blue-and-red dress she’d worn at the club. And she was smiling.
CRAG FACT OF THE DAY:
“Ratters have a knack for finding out things that are supposed to be secret, and have been known to work as journalists and detectives as well as spies.”
CragWiki.org
The hag sniffed the air once more and nodded. “I’ve done as I promised. Good luck, little cat.”
“Wait, can’t you just —”
But the hag slid away into the forest, muttering to herself as she disappeared into the dark. Emma turned back to the stage.
“Have no fear, future brothers and sisters,” the faerie Corbin was saying. “Come forward to embrace the forest.”
Helena and the three other teenagers walked past the audience and climbed up onto the stage. Corbin took Helena’s hand and smiled. The music changed from bells and flutes to a low drum and a singer, crying out in a language Emma didn’t recognize.
“What do we do?” she said.
“Just get out there,” Jack replied. “That’ll get their attention quick enough.”
Emma looked nervously at all the faeries and humans. “What if he runs off with her again? Farther into the forest?”
“Then we’ll track her down,” Cricket said.
“You’re wasting time!” Jack spat. His eye was brighter than ever in the moonlight, and he was fidgeting with some emotion Emma couldn’t quite read.
“Place your hands on the sacred tree,” murmured Corbin, “and become that which you desire most.”
Emma could see now that the impossibly tall tree next to the stage was carved all over with runes and pictures that seemed to flow into one another. There were satyrs dancing, cats rearing up with claws extended, chains of ratters tail-to-tail, lone trolls and packs of wolves and snake people. There were creatures Emma had only read about on CragWiki and creatures she’d never heard of before. There were moons in different phases, and constellations she didn’t know.
The tree had no leaves, but all manner of things hung off its branches — or were part of its branches: Emma couldn’t tell. There were many-colored lanterns, glass jars with fireflies, cages made of bone that were filled with crows and bats and brightly feathered small birds that Emma had never seen before.
“What do you want us to do?” Cricket said, tense with excitement.
Emma thought. “The faeries need their humans to see. Knock the humans to the ground, stand on them, scare them so they run away or shut their eyes. But don’t hurt them! Not if you don’t have to. Just keep their eyes on you and away from me. Got it? Okay, everyone. On my count of three we charge. One . . .”
Helena and the three teens gathered around the tree, and placed their hands on the trunk. The carved images began to move. The crows in their cages cawed excitedly. Lanterns glowed with blue flame.
“Two . . .”
Emma stared, wide-eyed, as vines began to grow from the tree, snaking down over the four humans, wrapping around them, lifting them off the ground and binding them to the trunk, in green cocoons.
“Three!”
She didn’t wait for her cats to respond. She was their Pride-Heart, and this was her hunt. She ran. She could feel them drawing magic from her, changing shape. Behind her the air filled with roars, and the humans all turned to look. They screamed and stumbled to their feet, unable to take their eyes off the cats.
“Stop them!” the faerie Corbin cried out. “It’s the human Pride-Heart, she wants to ruin us!”
“But don’t harm her!” Nissa shouted. “No one is to harm her!”
These contradictory instructions only served to confuse everything more. A few brave humans leaped at the cats, but they were quickly swatted aside by massive paws. A few more thought Emma would be easier prey, but her claws soon proved them wrong. As for the rest . . . a faerie enchantment could make them adore the faeries, but it couldn’t make them brave, not with a pride of huge cats bearing down on them. They ran.
“Idiots! Don’t take your eyes off her!” Corbin yelled, his head swiveling from side to side. “Find the girl, the little human girl, we need to see her!”
All this Emma took in with one quick glance, and then she was running past the faeries as they flailed blindly near the stage, up the steps, and past Corbin. Her claws were already out when she reached Helena.
“I knew you couldn’t stay away, cat-girl!” Nissa called out. “I can hear you. Have you come to stay with Nissa at last?”
Emma ignored her. Up close, she could see the vines had thorns. But where they pierced Helena’s skin only drops of clear, bright dew oozed out. Her sister’s eyes were tightly closed, as if she were in a deep dream.
“Helena, it’s me!” she cried. “I’m going to save you.” Jack and the Toe-Chewer were beside her. “Help me get her out of this,” Emma ordered, and together they scratched at the vines. But their claws just seemed to pass right through them.
“They’re not real!” Emma shouted. She tried to pull Helena free, but her sister wouldn’t budge.
“Well? Think of something!” Jack spat, as if it was his sister being turned into a faerie and not hers.
“Maybe I could turn into a troll for real this time and knock the tree down,” the Toe-Chewer babbled. “Or you could turn me into one of those things humans use to cut down trees. A knife, right? Or you could turn her into something really little, like a fly, and then she’d be able to get out —”
The vines are just like the faeries, Emma thought. Real, but not real. Nothing that cat magic couldn’t deal with.
As she focused on the vines, they became solid under her fingertips. Carefully, she began to cut them away.
“Yes!” Jack hissed. “That’s it!”
Helena’s eyes were wide now, and Emma could hear her trying to speak. She slashed at the vines as quickly as she dared, more worried about saving Helena’s life than giving her a few scratches here and there. Dew spattered over Emma’s palms where her claws bit into Helena’s skin, cool and sparkling like early morning moonlight.
As soon as Helena’s mouth was free of vines she started shouting. “Emma, stop, you’re ruining everything!”
“It’s all right,” Emma said, still slicing through the vines. “You think you love him, but you don’t. You don’t know what you’re saying.”
Emma heard her cats fighting, felt them using her magic. A mountain lion blurred past her as Cricket leaped toward a human that had pulled out his cell phone and was desperately jabbing at the screen, trying to dial. She knocked him to the ground and smacked the phone out of his hands, sending it sliding across the grass.
“Stop it, Emma, please! You don’t understand, you don’t know what this means to me!”
Emma freed Helena’s hands, only to have to fe
nd off Helena’s attempts to push her away. She clawed through the remaining vines gripping Helena’s legs, then retracted her claws and took her sister by the hand, pulling her away from the tree. “Come on, I’m getting you out of here before they turn you into one them.”
“Emma, you’re not listening to me!”
It was true, Emma hadn’t been listening, or paying much attention. She barely saw Helena’s hand rise. Crack!
Emma sat back on the stage, stunned. Her head swam. Helena had slapped her. Hard. Emma shook her head, trying to clear it — just in time to see Helena running from her, straight into Corbin’s arms.
“Corbin! Corbin, I’m here, I’m sorry,” Helena cried. “I didn’t know about her, I swear! Please don’t make me leave. I want to be like you, I want to be with you!”
“It’s all right,” Corbin said softly as he stroked her hair. “I found out she was your sister. One of her cats told me. I knew she would try to find you. I just hoped it wouldn’t be tonight.”
“Why didn’t you tell me our Lady Helena had such an interesting family?” Nissa said. “Oh, the cat-girl has to stay. Why don’t you trade Helena for her? You can get another Helena, they’re all over the place.”
“Shut up, Nissa,” Corbin growled.
Elsewhere in the clearing, the cats had done as Emma ordered. Too scared to run off into the darkness beyond the trees, the humans huddled together in small groups while cats circled around them, growling and snapping their teeth and occasionally administering a scratch if they caught a human so much as looking at the stage. Nearby, the faeries stood, blind and furious and powerless.
Powerless except for their hold over Helena.
“What are you doing?” Jack said to Emma. “Get up! Stop sitting there trembling like a little mouse!”
“She hit me,” Emma said, touching her face. It didn’t even hurt that much, except . . . except Helena had actually hit her.
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